ut entered
Trinity College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. Here he fell in with
a set somewhat but not much less distinguished than that of the famous
time, about ten years later, of which Tennyson was the centre--a set the
most brilliant member of which, besides Macaulay, was the poet Praed.
Praed had been accustomed to journalism before he left Eton, and had
made acquaintance at Windsor with the bookseller Knight, for whose
_Quarterly Magazine_ both he and Macaulay wrote some very good things.
Macaulay himself obtained the Chancellor's prize for English poems on
"Pompeii" and "Evening," in two successive years 1819 and 1820; and
after a very distinguished undergraduate career was elected fellow of
his college. He went to the Bar, and his father's fortune, which had
been a good one, being lost, his chances were for a time uncertain. In
1825, however, he won the admiration of Jeffrey and a place on the
_Edinburgh Review_ by his well-known, and slightly gaudy, but
wonderfully fresh and stimulating article on Milton; and literature,
which had always been his ideal employment, seemed already likely to
yield him a fair subsistence--for review-writing was at that time much
more highly paid than it is at present. Moreover the Whigs, on the eve
of their long postponed triumph, were looking out for young men of
talent; and Macaulay, being recruited by them, was put into Lord
Lansdowne's pocket-borough of Calne. In the Reform debates themselves he
distinguished himself greatly, and after the Bill was carried, having
been elected for Leeds, he was not long in receiving his reward. It was
munificent, for he, a man of little more than thirty, who had made no
reputation at the Bar, though much elsewhere, was appointed Legal Member
of Council in India with a salary very much of which could in those days
be saved by a careful man, especially if, like Macaulay, he was
unmarried. Accordingly when, after between four and five years' stay,
Macaulay in 1838 returned home, he was in possession of means sufficient
to enable him to devote himself without fear or hindrance to literary
and political pursuits, while his fame had been raised higher during his
absence by his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. Indeed his
Indian experiences furnished the information--erroneous in some cases
and partisan in others, but brilliantly used--enabling him to write the
famous essays on Clive and on Hastings, where his historical method is
at almost